Author
Topic: Support other Linux distributions (Read 3569 times)

I would like to see support for other Linux distributions because I can't even get Kubuntu 7.04 to install on my fairly run-of-the-mill Intel Pentium D system with a 945P chipset. Yes, I am going to say something over in the Ubuntu forums about this, but now I can't even try Linux MCE because the Ubuntu team apparently forgot to test their product on more than one type of system.

The original system (Pluto) was built around a custom Debian kickstart CD. Since Pluto is expected to be a blackbox, the underlying system was never expected to change and development did not necessarily use techniques conducive to cross distribution usage.

Ubuntu is a Debian based distribution that's quite popular right now and has corporate backing (ie, possibility to buy support.)

This is a new project with few people working on it. Supporting multiple distributions would add undue support headaches when there's bigger issues to take care of, first. I wouldn't be surprised if, a couple of years out, Fedora at least was also supported.

I would like to see support for other Linux distributions because I can't even get Kubuntu 7.04 to install on my fairly run-of-the-mill Intel Pentium D system with a 945P chipset. Yes, I am going to say something over in the Ubuntu forums about this, but now I can't even try Linux MCE because the Ubuntu team apparently forgot to test their product on more than one type of system.

Why does LinuxMCE require Kubuntu/Ubuntu/whatever?

Hi there,

We have several Hybrid/Core's running on various 945 class motherboards... including and Intel i945P & Intel D945Gnt and we have not found a 945 that failed yet. How does the failure manifest itself?

Well, like I said to "bobpaul" in a private message, when I first ran into trouble with Kubuntu booting, I disabled the "quiet" mode so I could read what the kernel was printing since I have some familiarity with the Linux kernel and have done some troubleshooting with it in the Red Hat environment. Every time I tried to boot it, it kept hanging when it would get to the hard disk initialization stuff. From what I gathered from going through the Ubuntu forums, it appears they decided to switch over to that new ATA driver ("libata" I think) that apparently makes every drive in the system look like a SCSI drive (all /dev/sdx instead of /dev/hdx and /dev/sdx). I have only a parallel ATA drive installed on the target system, so it could not have been recognizing any serial ATA drive I had in there. Regardless, it just wouldn't talk to my PATA hard disk under any circumstances with this driver whereas RHEL, using the "tried and true" older drivers, works just fine with it and doesn't complain.

I eventually gave up and just decided to try to get things going with Red Hat and MythTV on this system since the pcHDTV card works fine and I can get that working.

The previous version of Ubuntu/Kubuntu would boot fine, but obviously that won't let me run the newest version of LinuxMCE and I don't want to download the 1.00 release if it'll be a "dead end" (particularly if something doesn't work for me that is fixed by one of the beta releases).

Actually, I have no problems with Ubuntu: I'm not one who has a lot of time to become an expert Linux admin for 10 different distros, but I've found Ubuntu to be very friendly out of the box, with very little investment of my time to make things work, so I'm going with it.

Kubuntu, however, has caused me problems that have forced me to use Gnome instead: on my laptop with an ATI chipset (DVI * VGA out) hooked up to an LCD TV with 1366x768 native resolution, I could not get KDE to behave properly. Even after manually tweaking the xorg.conf file to match my LCD's resolution, KDE would revert to a different resolution on bootup. KDE also appears to use a bit more memory than an equivalent Gnome desktop.

Actually, since a media center application is supposed to be the one and only graphical interface running on a PC, I don't see what difference the desktop environment should make.

Apparently it has to do with the window manager used by KDE vs the window manager used by GNOME. If you're making the LMCE screen as the startup, then the environment really shouldn't matter, but if you want to be able to use a desktop AND run LMCE, it works nicer with KDE. The full reason is on the Wiki on the page about LMCE 1.1.

I had some trouble setting up X the right way as well (ATI chipset), and it seems to me that there are way to many (incompetent) utilities, tools and scripts fighting over the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. I ended up doing a "chmod 444" on it after editing it by hand, getting it right for once and for all, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had to restore it from a backup copy again.

The original system (Pluto) was built around a custom Debian kickstart CD. Since Pluto is expected to be a blackbox, the underlying system was never expected to change and development did not necessarily use techniques conducive to cross distribution usage.

Ubuntu is a Debian based distribution that's quite popular right now and has corporate backing (ie, possibility to buy support.)

This is a new project with few people working on it. Supporting multiple distributions would add undue support headaches when there's bigger issues to take care of, first. I wouldn't be surprised if, a couple of years out, Fedora at least was also supported.

So why did the project move away from Ubuntu to Kubuntu, I definitively don't understand that change.Are there technical reasons?Is it going to stay that way?

Ubuntu (gnome) doesn't let you use a window manager that supports composite (alpha blending). Only Kubuntu did. LinuxMCE 1.0 made you do a dual boot to run a special LinuxMCE-patched X with a separate manager, then reboot to use gnome. With KDE they work together with teh same window manager. Note that LinuxMCE is getting merged into KDE (see KDE's news).

Is it Finally Time for Desktop Linux? The number of desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the last year, and Ubuntu remains their Linux distribution of choice, according to a DesktopLinux.com survey.